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If we are to believe recent reports, and there is a great deal of anecdotal and statistical evidence to suggest that we should, the British newspaper has caught the American Bug.

Circulations are tumbling, as are advertising revenues. Subsequently journalists are getting the chop left, right and centre. Another raft of sackings has just been completed over at the Daily Telegraph, much to the chagrin of the remaining stalwarts at the paper, not to mention its many readers. Cost cutting is the new (Conrad) Black, as managers look to slash expenditure and raise income. Prices are going up, but the service, it seems, is going down.

Yet, as the traditional print media retracts its editorial and reporting capacity, the general volume of news and current affairs content is actually increasing. New 24hr rolling news channels are appearing every few months. Online-only newspapers are being set up, which are nourished solely by the advertising revenue they can generate. London’s tube stations are now swamped with free newspaper offerings, which are high on advertising and low on original content. Consumers are in danger of being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of media available to them.

So where does this leave ‘real’ journalism? You know, the investigative journalists who spend weeks, or even months, investigating a story. What about the humble foreign correspondent, or the pub-loving Westminster hack? If these fundamental journalistic roles become an expensive luxury, where will the original content come from? And who will expose the scandals that fuel our opinion heavy new media?

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When the Internet arrived, the media was thrust into a revolution that turned an increasing staid industry on its head. Advertising and readership slumped and the coffers began to run dry. ‘Evolve or die’ became the mantra, first in the US and then here in Britain. But the problem with the Internet is that this revolution never stopped. New and exiting ways to deliver content are explored by media organisations everyday. First it was real-time news updates, then subscriber emails, RSS readers, streamed on-demand videos, podcasting, blogs, and now it seems, with the launch of 18doughtystreet, a fully-fledged online TV channel devoted simply to politics. How can a lumbering old-media behemoth, such as the Telegraph, possibly consolidate in such a dynamic industry? In truth, it can’t.

Existing media organisations, such as newspapers, must forget the old rulebook – it has been torn up. Journalists may lament it, but the days of large editorial teams and amply staffed foreign bureaus are gone. Citizen journalism, as being pioneered by online-only news services and 18doughtystreet, along with freelance, are the only long-term future that exists for news reporting. Of course papers will have a few scribes covering mainline politics and the big events, but staffers will no longer produce the bulk of the content.

News providers must give people what they want. Mobile news, updated regularly, and in a format compatible with the tech savvy masses. Editors must harvest stories from around the world, using tools such as blogs, Skype, and local websites. Need a man on the ground for a military coup in Thailand? Why not a blogger, who can give a richer more informed view of what’s going on? Or, if we’re being really radical, why not create a network of small independent media outlets that submits stories to a website to be bought on demand by editors? As You Tube has proven, small low-cost outlets with creative and driven people are what works best online.

Again trained journalists will cry foul. How can we guarantee impartial news is protected from the opinion-heavy deluge in the blogosphere? How can we get the truth out, in the din of the Internet? Consumers of media will no doubt have to develop an effective antenna, reading beyond the comment into the facts beneath, and, I’m sure, there will always be a place for well-researched, impartial news. But it must be cost effective, dynamic, and digestible. Are the big media outlets lithe enough to survive?

Of course the people who most resent these changes are the same people who must embrace them, the editors and their journalists. It may well be that there will be blood on the carpet. Is it still inconceivable that one of Britain’s or America’s great dailies will actually expire? Not any more it’s not. Only those media organisations that accept the new reality, and change their operations accordingly, will survive.